He thought he was doing me a favor, explaining how it was. When he saw I was listening he let go of my arm.
When he finished, I let him have it: ‘Listen, you presumptuous jerk, I’m looking, not hooking. I’m trying to decide if I want to gamble my fifty dollars or get down the line. You wouldn’t know a whore from a horticulture handbook.’ (Girl, you do go on!)
‘What are you saying?’ he snarled. ‘I’m dumb?’
I realized then he wasn’t a pimp standing his turf, but a casino doorman. I said, ‘Not dumb, mistaken. We all make mistakes.’
He started to say something but glanced over my shoulder and shut up. When I turned around I saw why: there was a man six foot seven and a trim 240 who looked just like Jesus if Jesus was a cowboy who’d got dressed up for the big city. He was wearing snakeskin boots that probably moved some exotic species from the rare to endangered list, a western-cut sport coat with a beaverskin yoke, a white cowboy hat with a band of rattlesnake rattles strung on a gold wire, and a solid silver belt buckle in the shape of a gila monster. Knocked me out.
Impressed the doorman, too, or at least drained the nasty from his tone. ‘Evening, Longshot. Still picking winners?’
‘Enough to keep even,’ Longshot said, his voice like polished oak. He glanced at me – just for a second, but he really looked – then back at the doorman. ‘Slow night, Lyle?’ he said, sounding plumb puzzled that Lyle had nothing more interesting to do than hassle an absolutely provocative lady, even if she was a little rumpled and road-grubby.
‘Just telling the sister how it is,’ Lyle shrugged. ‘Spare some grief.’
Longshot’s nod said ‘Understood, appreciated, see ya later.’ He turned to me and said, ‘Ma’am, I couldn’t help but overhear the decision you’re struggling with, whether to put it on the line or use it for getting’ down the line. That’s a rough choice every time you’ve got to make it; I know,’ cause I’m forty-three years old and had to choose a bunch o’ times. My name, by the way –’ scuse my rough manners – is Longshot.’
‘I’m Jennifer Raine,’ I said. (I felt that safe with him.)
He tipped his hat!
So I lifted the hem of my imaginary dress and curtsied.
When he grinned, light danced in his lonesome-prairie, sky-blue eyes. ‘Jenny Raine,’ he repeated softly, as it should be said. ‘Jenny Raine. Sounds close to “gentle rain,” but I bet you can get stormy, too.’
I smiled right at him. ‘Hurricane,’ I warned, but with what I hoped was an inviting smile.
‘Have you made your decision, or are you still mulling it around?’
‘Mulling,’ I said, trying to make it sound as if mulling was something I did with my hips. ‘You said you were a man of experience. Have any advice for the young?’
‘Matter o’fact, I do: Lay it on the line.’
‘Always?’
‘Nope. But anyone in town can tell you that the best thing I have going is my ability to know when someone’s about to break loose and go hog-wild lucky. Jenny, you’re so ripe for a hot roll that I’ll back you ten grand, right now tonight, for half the action.’
‘Nope,’ I said, imitating his flat inflection. ‘But if you’ll match my fifty, anything either of us hits we’ll split down the middle.’
He offered his arm. Lyle, who’d faded back to his post, opened the door as we swept inside.
I know shit about gambling, so I let Longshot choose the game. He led me straight upstairs to a $10,000-limit crap table, took our pooled money, and bought one black chip. The guy who sold him the chip looked amazed. He said to Longshot, ‘Musta been a nightmare run to leave you short.’
Longshot grinned his easy prairie-sky grin. ‘No bad dreams, Ed; more like good vision.’
He asked what I wanted to bet it on – Come or Don’t at even money, numbers from two to twelve, Snake-eyes to Boxcars – I stopped him right there. ‘Boxcars,’ I said. I could hear the roar and rattle of a train coming down the mountain, see newspaper-wrapped hoboes watching the stars hurtle by.
Longshot said, ‘Double sixes pays 30–1, but it’s 36–1 against rolling it. Long odds.’
He was explaining what I’d done, not challenging my choice. I batted my pretty blue eyes and said, ‘I like long shots, Longshot.’ (Jenny, you’re so bad.)
A skinny guy in rimless glasses rolled the dice. Boxcars. Three thousand dollars.
Longshot smiled at me and said, ‘How much and on what?’ God, does he have style.
I could still hear the train wailing lonely through the night. ‘All of it,’ I said. ‘Boxcars again.’
The guy running the game lifted a brow at Longshot. Longshot told him, ‘The lady says let it ride.’
When I heard ‘let it ride,’ I knew we were rich. We were. Boxcars. Ninety-three thousand dollars.
Longshot gave me the sweetest smile. ‘It’s a $10,000-limit table.’ I loved that – not even asking if I wanted to stop, right, but regretting we couldn’t bet more. Now that gave me confidence.
Good thing, because I didn’t hear the train anymore. The train was gone. And in its place, as if its fading whistle had snagged her breath, Mia keened softly in her sleep. For an instant I flashed through her dreams, and she was dreaming again of snakes falling on her in the darkness, their eyes like tiny beads of moonlight.
‘Snake-Eyes,’ I told Longshot. ‘Last roll.’ And then, because I wanted him to know me, I said, ‘I have an imaginary daughter I have to take care of.’
That splendid man looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Whatever you say. Whoever you are.’
As we girls say, I was swooning.
Hello, aces! Snake-Eyes! Yes. Three hundred thousand dollars. Three hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars total. One hundred and ninety-six thousand five hundred each. Minus tips. I gave Lyle $500 on our way out.
Me and Longshot (Mia, after that one cry, had fallen deeply asleep) celebrated our good fortune by assaulting his drug supply – cocaine, killer weed, and disco-biscuits (my first time with any of them except marijuana, and that was nothing like these crusty buds), and then by joining in those sweet little obliterations that keep us alive.
Life is great.
Nina Pleshette, an R.N. at Oakland’s Kaiser Hospital, dialed the number she’d been given from a pay phone in front of the building. An answering machine picked up her call on the third ring. The message said, ‘Thank you for calling on TNT. At the tone, please punch in your code, followed by the code you seek.’
The tone was a bugle blowing Charge, followed immediately by Red Freddie screaming, ‘Smash the State!’
Nina punched in RN43, paused, then punched R77. There were two clicks, then the sound of an autodialer.
The phone rang twice in a concrete bunker three hundred miles northeast before Charmaine put down the research paper she was reading and answered with a soft ‘Hello.’
‘This is RN43. The patient died at 11.45 p.m. without regaining consciousness.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Charmaine said. ‘Did he have any visitors?’
‘No.’
‘Has a cause of death been established?’
‘No. No official diagnosis, either. The doctors were proceeding on the assumption it was a rare allergic reaction to an undetermined agent. His immune system just seemed to collapse.’
‘Thank you for calling,’ Charmaine said, and replaced the receiver.
She returned to the paper on ricin, a poison for which she’d been working on an antidote for almost two weeks. She concentrated on the molecular diagram, trying to imagine how it interacted with various coenzymes, but after a few minutes she put the paper aside and thought about Gurry Debritto. She was surprised he’d given up so quickly. She must have released a terrible force inside him, some mirror image of his own murderous power. She knew it wasn’t the drugs. The two darts had carried nonfatal doses of neuroblockers. The two injections she’d given him were harmless. In fact, since both had contained a balanced combination of vitamins a
nd minerals, they should have given him strength against himself.
Daniel was exhausted and sickened by the televised news. If Elwood and Emmett were international drug dealers, he was the ghost of Elvis Presley. Their murders had been professional all right, and so was the ‘official speculation.’ But it didn’t make sense that the CIA would put his description on an APB. Volta had predicted with virtual certainty and Daniel had seen the logic in his reasoning, that the CIA would fear the exposure of its incompetence and its secrets more than the loss of the Diamond.
He tried to remember the scene around the Cutlass. Four cars. Two city police with their flashers, one sheriff, and one more – an unmarked gray Ford, a little off to the side, whose radio described his bowling shirt. Two guys inside, coats and slacks. The spooks. He made a surmise he liked – the cops merely had the Cutlass on the hot-sheet from the Tindells’ original theft, but the CIA, having somehow snagged the Tindell brothers, knew the car had been boosted again, and by whom. So they knew he had been crying over his mother’s dream, that the Diamond was likely in the bowling bag, and that he could disappear – if they believed the Tindell brothers, which might have been difficult.
Daniel was disgusted with himself. He’d gotten cute and vanished when he could have as easily handled the Tindells with Tao Do Chaung. He’d had to show them what real power was all about. If he’d just kicked them senseless, they’d probably still be alive. The ‘unnamed sources’ wanted to remain that way, and weren’t likely to tolerate people like Elwood and Emmett swearing up and down in national media that they’d seen this disappearing bowler who claimed he had the Grail, and that even the CIA had questioned them. But who would have believed their proofless account of a hitchhiking bowler who vanished? Their deaths had been unnecessary.
He was so tired he almost missed the message: We know who you are and we’re not fucking around. That’s why the bodies had been dumped where they’d be discovered immediately. Pressure. Every time you reveal yourself, someone will pay the consequences.
He couldn’t allow himself any more foolishness. No more fun. Frivolity was fatal. He winced recalling his righteousness with Volta: The Diamond is my responsibility now. Dumb. The only thing he could honestly claim responsibility for was the dangerous indulgence of mindless whims. He’d been acting as if all this was make-believe in Meta Land. This was the real world, even if he wasn’t in it. Real terror the Tindells had felt. He wondered if they called out to each other as they knelt beside the road. He started to cry. He closed his eyes tightly against the tears, but his hands suddenly felt wet with blood and he had to open his eyes to check. His hands were dry. He pressed them hard to his face, pushing his head down into the pillow.
‘That’s right,’ he said aloud, ‘if you can’t indulge your funny little whimsies, indulge the guilt.’
And what about Bunny Boy Carl and Max Robbins, his boss? Daniel tried to concentrate. He assumed Carl had washed the pitcher and glass, but decided to check. Carl had left before he’d vanished with the money and contract – good, no prints there – but Carl would probably get questioned. Not as hard as Max, though, especially if he started babbling about a case full of money and a guy who just seemed to vanish. Daniel realized it had been stupid not to hang around invisible and listen to Max’s conversation with the cops. Yet the worst Max could tell them was the crazy truth, and Max hadn’t struck him as the sort to make himself look dumb. Whatever Max’s story, it was out of Daniel’s control.
That left the prints in the car. And maybe the pitcher and glass at the pizzeria. Daniel sagged, but he had to do it. He exchanged his bowling shirt for the first one that fit from one of the aisles of hangered costumes. It was white with muted ruffles down the front, a riverboat gambler’s shirt. A cutaway black coat went with it. No hat. Oh well. He started to take the Diamond and decided that a riverboat gambler going bowling at 2 a.m. was too whimsical. He hid it in a costume box labeled SWISS MAID SIZE 12.
He walked back to the pizzeria, staying visible until he approached the empty parking lot. He walked through the Jackrabbit Pizza wall. The pitcher and glass had either been washed or taken by the cops. He called a cab to meet him on the corner. He told the cabbie his girlfriend had gotten busted for drunk driving and they’d impounded his car. The cabbie knew where to go.
Daniel loitered in front of the Stolen Car Impound till the cabbie was out of sight, then he vanished. He walked into the car, hunched down, and reappeared, quickly wiping it down. He’d just vanished when the fingerprint team arrived to start dusting.
Daniel reappeared in a phone booth down the block, called a cab to let him off a half mile from Hothman’s Theatrical Supply, vanished, and walked the rest of the way. He reappeared in front of the box holding the Diamond, took it into the tiny bedroom with him, lay down, thought responsibility is hard, serious work, and fell asleep without a thought of vanishing.
He awoke late in the afternoon. After first checking the warehouse to be sure no one was working weekends, he showered in the small bathroom. Refreshed, he returned to the bedroom, shed his towel, and stretched out naked on the bed to think about what to do next. The possibilities overwhelmed him. As he took a deep breath, he saw the faint image of a young blond girl offering him a sphere with a gold center, saying something. He was not sure if this was memory or a desperate hallucinatory invention, but her face floated out of formlessness like an image rising in a darkroom tray. He strained to hear what she was saying, but she was too distant, the words wouldn’t carry. He concentrated on her lips as she began to fade, tried to hear the shape of her sounds as she dissolved. He thought he heard, ‘It’s a bead.’
The mind is the shadow of the light it seeks.
The mind is a mess.
Daniel felt he understood. A bead. Yes, yes, yes. The Diamond was a bead on the Solar Necklace, strung on the golden spiral of flame through its center. The notion of a Necklace of Light, a circle of spherical diamonds, each reflecting all, containing all, emptying all the golden light back into the Infinite Dazzle, excited Daniel’s imagination. He reached down and patted the bowling bag. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’
Where exactly, he wasn’t sure, but he intended to make the journey one careful step at a time. First, he needed to understand if the Diamond was a bead out of its proper order, whether it needed to be returned to its place.
Daniel decided to head for the Rockies. He’d outfit himself for long hauls and hike the wild high country considering the Diamond until he was sure of his next move.
He had a sudden insight, as if in reward for his wisdom: he’d been heading west because that was the direction to Nameless Lake. Daniel cringed. Wild Bill, he felt certain, would know that, and would be waiting there, maybe with Volta. He felt a deep surge of admiration for the clarity and strength Volta brought to responsibility, and a new appreciation for the cost of that commitment. Daniel decided that if his time in the mountains proved futile, he would take the Diamond to Volta, combine forces with him and whoever else they agreed should join. He figured he’d be humbled enough by then to bless any help he could beg.
He needed a new identity for the trip.
He needed to head east. They wouldn’t expect him to reverse directions.
He needed to decide how to travel. This time he wouldn’t compromise anyone’s safety by letting them see him vanish, or by revealing anything about the Diamond. He decided to keep hitching. Hitching provided him with instructive company. He’d felt lonely driving the Cutlass, self-enclosed.
He was impressed by the simplicity of his plan, and grateful for it. He swung off the bed and padded naked into the warehouse’s high-shelved aisles of costume-box identities and five long racks of hangered shelves.
His identity should provide comfort, warmth, and a natural way to carry the Diamond. An Italian Duke with a bowling-bag? Too much. He needed something with a certain symbolic congruence with his journey. He liked the idea of the Spanish Explorer – Cabeza de Vaca in the Rocky Mountain high
– but he’d have to cut off the damn collar. The Riverboat Gambler, which he’d already mostly assembled, was as good a choice as any if he could find the beaver top hat to crown it and a way to pack the Diamond. He spent twenty minutes pawing through hatboxes but didn’t find anything fitting.
The mind is the sum of the identities it assumes.
Frustrated, Daniel thought of randomly plucking from the racks and boxes. He ambled down the aisle marked Miscellaneous. Staggering under the armload he’d collected, he set it down on the floor to see what he’d snagged and how the pieces fit each other.
There were some arresting possibilities: a Coptic tunic of undyed linen inlaid with roundels of multihued wool; an Aegean helmet with boar tusks jutting from each side (it would be daring with the Riverboat Gambler outfit); two tasseled cloaks, one a brilliant cardinal, the other lapis-lazuli blue; another tunic, this one fur-lined, with a sleek taper to the sleeves; a Babylonian kaunake; a white turban.
Daniel was squatting there wondering if he could hide the Diamond under the turban when he saw, directly across the aisle, at eye level, exactly what he was looking for. The listed contents indicated a complete costume:
MOUNTAIN MAN / TRAPPER
AMERICAN CIRCA 1840–60
SIZE 46 (APPROX.)
BUCKSKIN SHIRT/PANTS
ELKSKIN MOCCASINS & LEGGINGS
FOXHEAD CAP (7¼–½)
CHEYENNE DYED-QUILL BELT W/ ANTELOPE SKIN POUCHES
LARGE POSSIBLES SACK: BUFFALO HIDE,
BRAIDED OTTER-SKIN STRAP